Chile is the only country in South America where abortion is completely banned, even in cases of rape and when a mother’s life is in danger. It’s time to change that.
Category: Ideas
The arrest of a notorious Mexican mobster belonging to the Zetas cartel is a significant accomplishment for President Pena Nieto, but it won’t tame the bloodshed.
BEIJING – In China, politics is something that worries and tangles up the minds of businessmen, perhaps more than others. Two recent events shed new light on what we can call the political anxiety of Chinese entrepreneurs. The first incident came after the remarks of Liu Chuanzhi, the chairman of tech giant Lenovo, during a […]
Despite the rise of the China’s economy in recent years, many people still doubt that Chinese enterprises will be able to develop innovative products or new manufacturing methods or business models. The Financial Times recently published an article in which it referred to two Chinese corporations, Haier and Huawei, which have learned and rapidly adapted […]
Li Tianyi, son of a famous Chinese general, is currently being tried in a case of alleged gang rape along with four of his friends. Referring to this ongoing case, Yi Yanyou, a law professor at Tsinghua University, declared on his microblog account last week: “Even if it was rape, the harm of raping a […]
In the latest edition of Fortune Magazine“s “Global 500,” exactly 85 Chinese corporations have made the list. That’s an increase of 16 companies compared with last year. But let’s take a closer look at the numbers. Of the companies listed, 90% are stated-owned enterprises (SOEs), and just two of the new batch on the list […]
-Analysis- ROME – Countless attempts have been made to separate Silvio Berlusconi’s fate from that of the Italian government and economy. Above all, how can one man’s personal destiny be disentangled from the properly functioning relationships between the powers of the State. In the end, it seems, all attempts at such a separation have been […]
–OpEd– BEIJING – In the past month, China’s State Council, Central Bank and Banking Regulatory Commission have all encouraged restructuring and reforming the nation’s financial institutions with private capital so that banks can take their own risks. Though the aspiration to establish private banks isn’t new, the fact that a number of top Chinese institutions […]
–OpEd– There are many similarities between the protests around Gezi Park in Turkey and those of the Free Pass Movement in Brazil. In both cases, initial demonstrations were small with specific objectives: to save the park and to obtain free public transport, respectively. And discontent in both countries reached a critical mass amid widespread perception […]
We are well past the tipping point, where governments are violating privacy and limiting the people’s rights in the name of some faceless enemy.
Liu Zhijun, China’s former Railway Minister, has received a “suspended” death penalty. He may get a reprieve. But one writer says it’s time for a vengeful China to abolish executions altogether.
Protests with similar roots continue in Brazil and Chile, two nations that might seem from the outside to be primed to enjoy their respective economic and democratic expansions.
BERLIN – After the fall of Mohammed Morsi in Egypt, the West is still trying to figure out what words to use to describe what is happening. In Berlin, no one wants to use the P-word, so instead of referring to a military putsch, Germany’s Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle spoke of a “stay in democratic […]
President Santos’ decision to try to negotiate an end to a decades-long civil war is the only path for a nation that has suffered too much already.
The United States is increasingly a Latino nation, which means the time is ripe to make sweeping immigration reform a reality. A view from Bogota, Colombia.
BUENOS AIRES – Last month, at the magnificent Palacio de Aguas Corrientes (“Palace of Flowing Waters“) in Buenos Aires, representatives from 12 Latin American countries came together to discuss something so basic, and so vital. How can we work together in our region to make best use of that priceless resource: water? I had the […]
Categories
That Imperfect Aspiration We Call Democracy
From Rio to Cairo, from Snowden to Erdogan, the excess and limits of the popular will.
ISTANBUL – If Turkey’s nationalist left tend to blame everything on imperialism, the country’s nationalist right has a tradition of pointing fingers at lobbies and vested interests trying to block Turkey’s progress. That same old tune can be heard today, as Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan himself has started blaming recent unrest in Turkey on […]
BUENOS AIRES – After a period when South American regimes seemed untouchable, the forces of opposition have revived in Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela. Up until a few months ago, South American presidents seemed invincible. They were reelected automatically. If someone faced a term limit, a successor would be designated who would later achieve a crushing, […]
– Op-Ed – BERLIN – Two people recently “disappeared” into the vastness that is China. The whole world is talking about one of them: Edward Snowden whose revelations about digital spying by the National Security Agency have fueled fear and indignation. Big Brother, your name was and is USA. Nobody is talking about photographer and […]
-Essay- PARIS – From the Turkish protests in Istanbul to the French anti gay-marriage protests, and from euthanasia rights to fledgling forms of participatory democracy, it is difficult to ignore the growing aspirations of Europeans toward autonomy and freedom of choice. This new individualization dynamic is silently revolutionizing European values. Individualization is the the power […]
Brazil is just the latest, though largest, recent example of a Latin American country that has seen grassroots movements catch fire from below.
Not just cheap — but *free* public transport — deserves a proper public hearing. A look at the irony of those now in power, and their desire to silence legitimate debate.
Op-ed ISTANBUL – If I were inclined, I could wax all day about the new National Intelligence Agency law. I could opine, for example, that “Even George Orwell could not dream of an intelligence agency that would keep the urine samples of its people.” But that’s for another day. I could also explain how the […]
-OpEd- BEIJING – On June 6, the Guardian newspaper in Britain and the Washington Post in the United States revealed the American government’s ongoing efforts to monitor the activities of people all around the world. They did so only after verifying the authenticity of the confidential documents they had obtained. The top-secret documents showed that […]
It’s more than just an easy target…
-Op-Ed- BEIJING – It would seem that police brutality is not just for ordinary – powerless – citizens in China. A policewoman from central China’s Henan Province was recently arrested when visiting her daughter in the provincial capital Zhengzhou. Mistakenly accused of being sex workers, the woman and her daughter were beaten, tortured and detained […]
Protests against the construction plans to pave over Istanbul’s Gezi park have exploded into a national standoff. If the project goes to a popular referendum, what will really be at stake?
A school sex-abuse scandal has reignited concern for those left most vulnerable by China’s rapid migration and industrial expansion.
The National Security Agency’s spying on both its own citizens, and foreigners, has turned the idea of the “open web” on its head.
Inside the demographics and economics of an aging planet.
-Op-Ed- ALGIERS – The confusing communication strategy orchestrated by supporters of Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika around his recent hospitalization in Paris — and the mystery surrounding the actual state of his health — have led the Algerian press and the opposition parties to denounce the lack of transparency and secrets that are so characteristic of […]
ISTANBUL – Dozens, maybe hundreds of articles saying more or less the same thing have been published by the Turkish media: “The Prime Minister doesn’t understand the street…” This sentence (and the sentiment) continues as such: If he ever could properly understand it, he would also realize that he is in the wrong and will […]
-Editorial- SANTIAGO – If we based our knowledge of Latin America on Amnesty International’s latest global human rights report, we would believe that there is no real justice in the region, violence is on the rise, police regular torture citizens, that there are multiple attempts to exterminate indigenous groups, and organized crime is gaining ground. […]
For the past six months, the Chinese media has been reporting that rice grown in the south-central Hunan Province contains unacceptable levels of cadmium, a carcinogenic heavy metal. Last month, an inspection of samples in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, revealed that more than half the batches of cadmium-tainted rice came from three rice mills in the […]
Argentine President Cristina Kirchner has it in for top Buenos Aires daily Clarin. But it’s part of much grander plans to extend her power well past the line of legitimate democracy.
The first generation of entrepreneurs who built their businesses after the 1978 Chinese economic reform are giving way to their children, just as resentment against the rich explodes.
After a wave of nostalgia for the Communist regime of East Germany, debate is opened in Germany about whether Communism was as bad as Nazism.
-Op-Ed- LIMA – Last January, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced that he and Venezuelan parliament president Diosdado Cabello were both the target of an assassination plan – without unveiling the conspirators’ identity. In March, he said the Pentagon and the CIA were hatching a plan to murder opposition leader Henrique Capriles and frame him for […]